Brother of French School Killer Investigated for Complicity

A French judge has ordered the brother of the man who murdered four at a Jewish school in Toulouse last week to stay in jail while prosecutors investigate possible complicity.

Abdelkader Merah has denied helping his older brother Mohamed kill three children and a rabbi, as well as three soldiers in earlier attacks. But police say he told them he was proud of what his brother did.

He will stay in jail where he could face charges of complicity in a terrorist act. Police already suspect Abdelkader Merah belonged to a network that smuggled Islamic militants into Iraq in 2007.

Abdelkader's wife, Yamina Merah, was briefly detained but later released without charge Sunday. Her lawyer says Abdelkader took five-to-six trips to Egypt for what she believed were Arabic courses.

“She learned details about his travels, she learned that apart from learning Arabic, he might have led a particular life in the practicing of his religion, a life that could have lead him to a particular type of extreme Salafi practice, a fundamentalist practice.”

Mohamed Merah died in a gunbattle with police Thursday who kept him holed up in his Toulouse apartment for more than 30 hours.

He shot down three children — ages four, five, and seven — and a rabbi outside a Jewish school in Toulouse before driving away on a motorcycle last Monday.

He also shot down three French soldiers near Toulouse in two shootings earlier in March. He claimed he belonged to al-Qaida and wanted to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children in the Mideast and French involvement in Afghanistan.